Bellows are well known in industrial and other applications to enclose the space between two relatively movable parts of a machine. One such application is a lift table of the type that has a scissors or other lift mechanism to lift a table relative to a base. One end of the bellows is connected to one of the relatively movable parts of the machine, for example in a lift table to the table, and the other end of the bellows is connected to the other relatively movable portion, for example the base in a lift table, and the bellows encloses the machine between the two portions, i.e. between the base and the table in a lift table, typically where the mechanism resides. The bellows encloses this to protect it from dirt, coolants, cutting fluids, light, humidity and so forth.
Bellows have typically been made by providing accordion folded sewn panels, made of for example rubberized or vinyl coated canvas or other fabric strips joined edge to edge to form the pleats of the panel, and connecting adjacent panels at the corners with flexible or foldable fabric which encloses the corners. As such, the bellows has a typically four-sided pleated construction. While a bellows must be expandable and contractible to enclose an axially variable space, a bellows must also provide resistance to lateral forces which may be exerted against the sides of the bellows to protect the enclosed space. The bellows must do this when it is both extended and retracted, and at all the positions in between.
The individual slats which make up the pleats of a bellows have typically been joined at their longitudinal edges either by bonding to a continuous sheet of flexible material and folding, by sewing or by a similar operation. The material of the bellows at the edges of the individual slats, i.e., at the apexes of the pleats, must be sufficiently flexible to permit expansion and contraction of the pleats as the bellows expands and contracts. However, the slats must also be rigid enough to support the weight of the bellows without sagging and to resist lateral forces which tend to deflect the bellows in the lateral direction perpendicular to the axial direction, which is the direction of expansion and contraction. The result in many of the prior art bellows has been to make the bellows of multi-layer constructions, including flexible layers and rigid layers, or to re-enforce the bellows with wires or rigid panel components, resulting in expensive fabrication operations and considerable weight of the bellows.